Thursday, April 26, 2012

Friday, April 20, 2012

Happy Friday everyone! Don’t you just love that Friday feeling when you know you have two whole days of relaxing ahead of you? To wrap up my week I’m finally getting around to sharing the “Tea Party” baby shower I hosted a few weeks ago for my (still very pregnant!) BFF. Everything was hand-made and DIY’ed for the special day. You can see the step-by-step invites, favors, welcome sign, and games and cards I made here. It was so much fun planning it and I think it went great so I’ll just let the pictures I snapped do the talking for me. Enjoy!

So what did you all think? Have you ever hosted or been to a shower that was full of awesome ideas or fun decor? Please feel free to share any stories or ideas you have!

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

I’ve been posting up a storm here on Reckless Bliss about a baby shower I recently hosted. This will be the last post before I show you guys the actual shower pictures! Exciting right? I wanted to share the things I made -with the help of Microsoft paint- for games, cards and labels.

These are the games I cooked up for everyone to play during the shower:

Pretty straightforward games right? (Message me if you want me to post the answers and I will) Everybody said the celebrity baby names game was the hardest one FYI.

I also made up some cards for everyone to fill out for Mama and the baby to keep forever and reflect back on. The first is an “Advice” card where each person gets an opportunity to dole out all the things they want to tell the new Mommy. Since the shower had a tea party theme I added some pretty teacup pictures I found on Pinterest to the side of the card. The second is a “well wishes” card for the baby, giving everyone a chance to say all the things they hope for the baby’s life to be rich with:

Lastly, I made some place cards keeping with the tea party theme to label the food for the guests:

I used Pinterest, Graphics Fairy, and Microsoft Paint to mix all these components together and create shower fun. Stay tuned for my next post where I’ll be sharing these puppies in action along with all the rest of the baby shower decor and food.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

I’ve been sharing some of the DIY projects I recently worked on for my BFF’s “tea party” baby shower. You’ve seen my tea party invitations and party favors and now I’m going to share with you good folks the welcome sign for the door I made!

I started out by heading over to Michael’s because what craft project isn’t better served by a trip to Michael’s? I found this great wooden cut out of a teapot for about $5 that was perfect for our tea party theme. Then I just had to figure out how to take it from dull to dazzle.

Cue the fabric paper! This adhesive backed paper was a new discovery for me and I was so excited to have an excuse to try it out. Since the gender was unknown the green worked well and the polka dots are just so darn cute. I scored it on sale for about $2 each.

I was so excited to get started on this project. To attach the adhesive paper to the wooden teapot I peeled off the backing and laid the teapot face down onto the sticky side. I considered just tracing the shape onto the back of the paper with the peel still on then cutting it out but soon realized it would be extremely difficult to center everything perfectly onto the teapot and not have any wood showing.

Once I had the teapot face down on the paper I stacked some heavy books on top to give the glue a chance to really grab hold of the wood and not peel away. I left it like this for about an hour. (And yes, I do have a mild Audrey Hepburn addiction)

After about an hour, I put the paper and teapot on a cutting board face down and used my little Martha cutting tool to cut carefully around the shape of the teapot. Once your are finished it should look like the picture above when you flip it over.

Because it is fabric paper there was a lot of little frays and runaway threads but these are easily taken care of with some sharp scissors. Just carefully follow along the perimeter of the shape cutting off any little imperfections.

For the next step I started to lay out my plans to decorate the sign. I measured exactly how much space I would need in the center of the teapot for my welcome message then hot glued some paper flowers (another Michael’s find) and a ribbon tied into a bow, to pretty up the front.

I hung up the teapot to let the glue dry and everything settle while I worked on the next step.

I decided on a bunting style banner to run across the teapot. I used my Martha letter stamps to spell out the words “BABY SHOWER” in a pretty purple color to match the bow then I carefully measured each letter into a triangle as well as the backing frame for the letters which is slightly bigger.

A simple glue stick did the work for me to attach each letter to it’s frame and then I was ready to attach it to my teapot.

Before attaching each letter I ran a piece of the purple ribbon across the top and bottom to act as the line the bunting hangs from. I then used more hot glue and attached each letter. Be sure to layout exactly where each letter will be placed beforehand so you can space it properly.

My little wooden teapot was complete!

Even though I was pleased with the result I still felt like it needed a little something to stand out. So back to Michael’s I went! I found a cute wicker wreath for about $5 that fit the teapot perfectly (thankfully they had more teapots in the store so I could test it out since I didn’t have mine with me) and figured it would frame the teapot splendidly: I wrapped some purple ribbon around the wreath with extra at the top to hang it from and hot glued some white flowers to the sides, all which was done really inexpensively for about $2. I think the wicker wreath and flowers really helped to make the sign stand out for the guests arrival.

In total, the welcome sign rang in at around $20. It was one of the more labor intensive projects because of all the small details involved but totally worth it since it’s the first thing guest see when they arrive so it’s got to be purdy!

Sunday, April 1, 2012

Well my pretties, yesterday I threw a shower for my enormously pregnant friend and now that she’s seen everything up my sleeve for the special day I can share it here on Reckless Bliss with you good folks -including the card I got her which you can see above. Normally I’d get my craft on and make a homemade card but this one was too fun to pass up. (You can also check out a previous post I did on some DIY tea party themed invites here).

I’m going to be sharing a lot of the various things I made and eventually showing you the actual shower itself but let’s pace ourselves shall we? Today I want to share the French lavender soap favors I made for each guest to take home. It was super simple but turned out quite cute in the end.

I started out with some sweet little wicker baskets I found at a soap store for $0.88 each. Sold.

To make it look more like a nesty and cute I filled it with some run of the mill shredded tissue paper you can find at any dollar or craft store.

Each soap bar got wrapped in brown wrapping paper which I also bought from a dollar store.

I attached a clear piece of doubled sided tape in the center of the front of the soap.

I then wrapped a thin piece of ribbon cut to length around the soap and stuck it to the tape.

For the next step I laid another piece of doubled sided tape (amazing invention by the way!)over top of the ribbon on the face of the soap. Be sure that this piece of tape is long enough so it will give a big adhesive surface to hold your label in place.

I used Microsoft Paint and created personalized labels for each bar so when people go to use the soap sometime down the line they’ll remember the special day we all shared. Plus, personalized is always just more fun than generic!

After I cut each label down to size using my handing dandy Martha paper cutter I placed the label on top of the newly taped soap face.

Then each bar gets to relax in the little basket nest.

Don’t they look comfy-cozy altogether?

Once all the goodies are prepared I wrapped them in a piece of clear cellophane (word of the day: dollar store!) and tied them into little bows with more of the ribbon I used to wrap each bar.

One tip I would suggest is to tape the cellophane in place once you’ve twisted the top so it holds its shape while your tying your bow on, otherwise it can get pretty frustrating.

I’m a major planner so these beauties were finished for about two months before the actual shower. My home slowly turned into a storage unit for baby shower decor. This is part of the affected area above my T.V. I have to say though, I wasn’t hating how girly and tea party-like my place was becoming.

So that was my favors, pretty simple stuff. The bulk of time consumption comes from all the wrapping and assembling but it’s way less expensive then buying some pre-made ones online or from a fancy store. I estimate that each favor only cost me about $2.80 after materials cost. It doesn’t include my time to make each one but I was on Netflix the whole time while sniffing heavenly lavender soap so I can’t complain. Check back soon for some more DIY projects!

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"I believe in manicures. I believe in primping at leisure and wearing lipstick. I believe in pink. I believe that laughing is the best calorie burner. I believe in kissing, kissing alot. I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong. I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day and I believe in miracles." -Ms Audrey Hepburn

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